[Devblog] This Week In The Unified Inventory

[QuackBot]

Hello Spacefriends
As mentioned previously, we are not at all happy with the state of the unified inventory. To everyone that is currently struggling with it, you have my apologies.
As a remedy, we’re going to try and provide you with weekly changes to it, until we get it into a state where you’re happy with it. Our first group of fixes will go out Tuesday, May 29th, and are as follows:

• Looting: Cargo containers and wrecks will function the same. Having multiple wrecks or containers open should be easy to loot as you can just click “loot all” and it will automatically go to the next item on the list instead of your ships cargohold. There is an added performance increase as well.
• Ship Hangars: Your active ship will be displayed in the ship hangar. It was a bit confusing that it would disappear. All assembled ships will now be displayed, regardless of activity state.
• Ship Hangars: When you have a ship hangar open but switch ships, the hangars for the old ships will still be listed as “active ship”. That has been corrected.
• Containers: Containers are sorted alphabetically. That makes a lot of sense.
• Performance: We’ve applied fixes that let you handle larger numbers of items more gracefully. It should be a great deal faster now.
• Performance: Handling large numbers of POS modules was extremely slow. That has been remedied and it should be back to pre-patch performance.
• Errors: Action failed messages would pop up if you had two cargoholds open and tried to open a third. This has been fixed as well.
• Corp Hangars: If a corporation has impounded items present in a station, directors will have a “release items” button which will give you access to the impounded assets.

That’s it for Tuesday, but we will not stop there. As soon as these improvements are published, we start working on the next round of changes. We’ll update what those are and when they go out shortly after.
Again, you guys have my deepest apologies for this situation. We’ll do whatever we can to rectify it. We're going to continue to take your valuable feedback and add it to the list of changes we want to make.

More changes are coming, I'll do another update on Tuesday (May 29th).
Soundwave




original link

[DaneJa]

What in the fuck? CCP is going to iterate an idea prior to a couple broken years of player frustration?!

[Sponk]

Well, at least they've taken ownership.

[Liptonez]

Looting: Cargo containers and wrecks will function the same. Having multiple wrecks or containers open should be easy to loot as you can just click “loot all” and it will automatically go to the next item on the list instead of your ships cargohold. There is an added performance increase as well.

CCP assuming I want to clutter my cargo with random T1 shit and 15k T2 missiles when looting.

Also, will I still have to scroll through 100 pos guns to access my ships in a pos?

[Daneel Trevize]

Seriously why do they do these deadline releases when they're then forced to say it's utter shit?
Release 1 week later with the majority of the obvious or critical bugs removed, and so much less of a bad taste for everyone.

+1 for recent iteration

-1000 for causing this problem and others (killing Vanguards completely, rails still being shit, damps, info links, ECfuckingM).

[Qui Shon]

Looting: Cargo containers and wrecks will function the same. Having multiple wrecks or containers open should be easy to loot as you can just click “loot all” and it will automatically go to the next item on the list instead of your ships cargohold. There is an added performance increase as well.

This is an interesting compromise. I remember it not being possible to put items into a wreck, but maybe now it is?

Their profuse apologies, I have to say I was not expecting that.

[Rakshasa The Cat]

Seriously why do they do these deadline releases when they're then forced to say it's utter shit?
Release 1 week later with the majority of the obvious or critical bugs removed, and so much less of a bad taste for everyone.

Cause sometimes you need a release to figure out what is really a problem and what is just random nerds sperging on forums.

[Zeekar]

Seriously why do they do these deadline releases when they're then forced to say it's utter shit?
Release 1 week later with the majority of the obvious or critical bugs removed, and so much less of a bad taste for everyone.

Cause sometimes you need a release to figure out what is really a problem and what is just random nerds sperging on forums.

Or you could just listen to what people bug reported from the test server, but i assume its a lot easier to ignore that.

[Durzel]

Yeah, it's good news that they're iterating on it sooner rather than later, but the devblog and especially the whole "we are not at all happy with it" spiele is quite bizarre, as if they didn't know what they were deploying.

[Qui Shon]

Seriously why do they do these deadline releases when they're then forced to say it's utter shit?
Release 1 week later with the majority of the obvious or critical bugs removed, and so much less of a bad taste for everyone.

Cause sometimes you need a release to figure out what is really a problem and what is just random nerds sperging on forums.

Randoms nerds is who their customers are....

[Grey Stormshadow]

Well if you browse to check CCP Optimal's reply at page 9...

  Spoiler:

I've not been able to be very active on the forums for the last couple of days simple because my time is better spent fixing defects as it is.

First, on the SISI thing; it's true that we let a few issues slip us and that's regrettable, but it is simply a fact that not all issues surface on test servers. We certainly did fix a LOT of issues that we discovered through your feedback from SISI. But, not all of them sadly.

Revamping a fundamental system, used by every single player, such as the inventory system so that it will fit every player's needs and expectations from day one is a tall order to say the least. There is probably no other system within EVE that is as multidimensional as the inventory and the use cases seem to be endless. The old system had not changed much at all and most of you veterans could probably operate it at lightning speeds blindfolded. Having to waste time re-learning basic things is annoying as hell and I get it. I've been there myself. I would be pretty furious if someone forced me to use a different Python editor, and it would probably slow me down tremendously for the first couple of days or even weeks. A fitting punishment for my crimes maybe?

THE biggest complaint about the EVE UI, according to our surveys, is the number of windows needed to accomplish tasks. We identified the inventory as being one of the biggest violator and that's why we went on this journey (not because we like to spend Sunday afternoons on the EVE forums, lovely as they are, mind you!). A lot of things have changed in the world of user interfaces during the last 10 years, and I think it's safe to say that a game shipping with the old EVE inventory system EVE today would receive mixed reviews.

The old system had been brewing out in the wild for 9 years, but the new one for less than a week, so obviously it has not received the same amount of updates and fixes. We are, and will be working hard to make sure that no matter your profession in EVE, you will have an equally or faster way of doing what you need to do.

I beg you to honestly give the new system a try. If you still don't like it and you aren't able to find an equally good or better work flow for your tasks, tell us why. Many of you have already done so, and we will are already acting on that feedback, but keep it coming. Telling us that it sucks won't help anyone, and I must stretch what has already been stated that reverting the entire thing is not an option (It's also as good as technically impossible). Making it optional is also not optional (confusingly enough) as it would require us to maintain two systems side by side which would cause an exponential increase in code and interface complexity if we were to make a habit of it. It's not as simple or as good of an idea as it might seem at first.

One of the hardest part of EVE is dealing with the UI and we are constantly being asked to change it. When we do, people without exceptions ask for the old one back. Doing both is obviously impossible. There is still work to be done and work we shall.

...you quickly realize that he still lives in reality where the problem is in the customers, not in his work.

[Mfume]

While people don't like hearing it, it is true that quite a few complaints were bound to crop up that were nothing more than "change is bad." The idea of overhauling and adding additional functionality to the inventory isn't a bad one, it's just the implementation is... ugh.

[Sponk]

Aside from the 'click hangar where the fuck is all my shit oh it was just loading' problem, the UI issues aren't huge.

Then again, I know how to use Windows Explorer.

[Mfume]

Aside from the 'click hangar where the fuck is all my shit oh it was just loading' problem, the UI issues aren't huge.

It's not even that they are huge issues, it's that they are annoying.

[Lady Spank]

My main concern is how you can no longer have a simple and small cargo window open when in space, followed by a small, predictably placed wreck window while looting.

It seems they fixed the window placements but you still can't easily have a small cargo window open right?

I could be off the mark there since Im currently unsubbed simply because I want a break but I'm also waiting to hear these cargo and missile slowdown issues are fixed.

Sent from my electric telephone

[RoemySchneider]

Telling us that it sucks won't help anyone

yes, yes it does help everyone. when something is shit in its basic core design and is based on a wrong assumption, derived from a faulty interpretation of a disconnected survey, such a description is warranted. the sooner we go back to the thing that was better, the uhhh better -.-

eve has dozens of places to put stuff in; there's hundreds of various kinds of containers. some are bound to coordinates in space, some are wraps in hangars/cargo bays for dozens of ships, some are assets in very far away places or perhaps it's just your drone bay (read; only a limited group of things can be put into them)...

trying to cram those together into one window just because we battle with...
... 2-4 chat windows (which have to be huge somehow), a probe&scan window (which i'd actually want separated in order to use both functions simultaneously), the unreliable overview, the selected items, the drones, the fleet window & broadcasts, the watchlist, allow me to add the ship readouts & weapons console (whatsitcalledagain), the cluttered top left system info(s) and perhaps one or two actual inventory windows for e.g. cap charges...
... , is such an ill-informed decision, proves how far off the surveys have been thus far and demonstrates a lack of knowledge of how players actual play the game.

well, you were going to look at what we do, not what we say - turns out it's neither; be that on sisi, tq or wherever vOv


but if you had really wanted to reduce the number of inventory-related windows, you could've reduced the number of places we have put stuff into; one ammo bay in the tower, the modular pos (that flogging-the-dead-horse-thing iirc) that could've handled all industry out of one bay or somesuch (enlargeable with a corp array thingy or so), etc






humm i must admit miss sperging at :ccp: a wee bit... good times... good times....

[Ampoliros]

Telling us that it sucks won't help anyone

yes, yes it does help everyone.

No, it really doesn't. Not if going back isn't an option.

Moreover, even if it was an option, demanding that CCP just go back is a pretty stupid thing anyway. The old system had no functionality that the new one doesn't have/can't have as well; it needs some tweaks and fixes, but that's it, and by all accounts those appear to be coming through now and over the next few weeks.

[Max Teranous]

Telling us that it sucks won't help anyone

yes, yes it does help everyone.

No, it really doesn't. Not if going back isn't an option.

Moreover, even if it was an option, demanding that CCP just go back is a pretty stupid thing anyway. The old system had no functionality that the new one doesn't have/can't have as well; it needs some tweaks and fixes, but that's it, and by all accounts those appear to be coming through now and over the next few weeks.

Remember when going back to ship spinning in station wasn't an option either? Good times.

Max

[Grey Stormshadow]

Fixing the game is quite easy when you got proper instructions

  Spoiler:

[Durzel]

Telling us that it sucks won't help anyone

yes, yes it does help everyone.

No, it really doesn't. Not if going back isn't an option.

Moreover, even if it was an option, demanding that CCP just go back is a pretty stupid thing anyway. The old system had no functionality that the new one doesn't have/can't have as well; it needs some tweaks and fixes, but that's it, and by all accounts those appear to be coming through now and over the next few weeks.

I really hope there will be some way of having a "Unified Inventory Lite" in space. If I open a wreck or a cargo container I just want one simple window, without loads of shit at the side, that loads as-near-as-dammit instantaneously.

I get that the concept of it is that it eliminates multiple windows showing the same information, but that spec doesn't really take into consideration the reality of how the UI is used. How long do people have their cargo bays, cargo containers or wrecks actually open for? Typically people open them, move stuff around, and then close the windows. Losing screen real estate to a tree view thing, ala Windows Explorer, seems like it would be an improvement in a brainstorming meeting but actually isn't when you're playing the game.

Having all the wrecks you have opened showing down the side is pretty useless when a) you typically have no interest in a wreck once you've opened/looted it and b) you have to be <2500m to manipulate it anyway, meaning it is redundant to see it there. Now if it were possible to analyse the contents of a wreck remotely, but still need to be <2500m to loot, that would be a useful improvement and would actually justify the UI change.